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" Last But Not Least "

          THE CHURCH BELLS SOUNDED in the Plaza de la Catedral, where afternoon heat danced over the cubic stone in illusions. A bath of light cast down restlessly from spotless blue skies over the city of Cádiz where that very morning their ships had anchored, forcing thus Jackie, in a desperate attempt to not lose her edge, to acquire and wear one of those new pairs of round sunglasses circulating for a while. While she couldn't stop the heat from playing a number on her when it came to her wear — a formally-appropriate length dress with short loose sleeves and an imitation of a button's up collar rested around her neck, an outfit from which Tommy's hat was no longer allowed to be missing anymore —, she could certainly make sure the sun blinding her eyes won't be forcing her to miss a step while climbing up to the entrance of the Cádiz Cathedral.

Before the open doors, a priest waited for her. "Lady Sarah?" he inquired once she stopped before him, measuring Jackie from head to toe.

"In the flesh," Jackie breathed out, smiling through his confirmation to her that he was her contact. Alas, she removed her sunglasses upon entering the cathedral, which they had to in order to reach the crypt beneath and walk the maze only the priest thought he knew; this underground structure would have likely impressed Jackie had Lester not had the time in the morning, since their docking, to find all the maps of the plaza above and the cathedral itself, including that of the tunnels running underneath. If they could gain this information so fast, anyone could as well.

"Tell me about the production, the tunnels, profits made in the area," Jackie urged the priest to enter a discussion long before they have traversed the entirety of the distance through the crypt towards the smuggling deposits.

"We own a good chunk of the Palomino vineyards," the priest admitted. "The distillery is that way," he pointed down a tunnel they passed, opening to the side. "This underground network spreads in all the right parts of the city. Everything coming from the distillery, bottled up Sherry, PX Syrup, Muscat and Cognac, passes down this way twice a year and gets stored in the deposit we are seeing now. From the deposit, we sell during winter to the city's people, during spring to the hotels and bars, during summer we send transports to our fellow churches in the region and during autumn we fill up the deposit again. Ten bottles sum up to about one peseta. A dollar, I have heard is about sixty peseta these days, so we have around a hundred dollar profit."

"Not amazing, but not catastrophic either," Jackie noted. "I reckon I can get you a fair price of one dollar per bottle if it's of quality." She watched carefully for the glint in the priest's eyes.

"And how will this work?"

"I'll evaluate your wines," Jackie walked him through the process. "We approximate how much they are worth currently, based on your figures and registers. Accountants can be present if you are uncertain of your numbers, but not necessary in setting our base price. This base price is what I will be paying you upfront to lift the merchandise off your hands. A classic selling procedure, we'll even have a formal, legal contract as a guarantee. What happens next with your goods is really none of your concern. Me and my company sell them at local value in different parts of the world. Once we sell out, we bill you the income, from which we claim five percent per twelve item batch, non-negotiable. After the bill, we pay you and that's it. Quite an easy process, right?"

"You've been doing this for a while," the priest laughed nervously. "And the contract..."

"We both keep a copy, Father," Jackie beamed quickly over his uncertain trailing off. "This is a one time deal, the contract dissolves as soon as the goods have been spread on the market."

"A one time deal?"

"With an opening for future partnership, should we both find our profits satisfactory."

It would soon have been almost two years of continous work on this level for Jackie. Despite having initially mourned the contacts she lost due to the incident that got her and her brother in prison, she now held onto a much more valuable, albeit shorter, list of contacts — a once book turned into half a dozen pages of serious sellers. She wasn't quite sure about this priest from Cádiz just yet, but after seeing the cathedral's deposit, she was given a basket with three bottles as samples to make up her mind over.

"Oh, and one more thing, madame," the priest stopped on the middle of the aisle, in the chapel, watching Jackie do the same after taking a few steps ahead of him out of inertia. She lowered her sunglasses away from her face once more and waited rather perplexed by what more he could possibly ask. All her confusion however dissipated once she watched the priest retrieve a letter from one of his pockets — her heart immediately sunk and color drained from her face.

Had she not regained a little sense of herself momentarily, she would have dropped that heavy basket and spilled the wine all over the cathedral's floor. Instead Jackie straightened herself, closed her mouth and contained her breathlessness and shock the best she could.

"This letter arrived for you shortly after I have received your message," the priest explained and handed her the letter, not before watching her lower on the ground carefully the basket, as if anticipating as soon as the confirmation was palpable, she would be unable to stiffen her most exuberant joy.

The first thing Jackie noticed about the letter was the stamp and as soon as she recognized its origin as Birmingham, she let out a little scream that, once escaped from her lips, startled the priest and continued echoing on around the Cathedral. She quickly clasped her free hand over her mouth, holding with the other the letter to her chest in a clear attempt to now allow her trembling to be crudely visible.

"Excuse me, Father," she lowered her hand from her mouth, apologetic, but unable to conceal her smile. "I... May I stay here for a moment? I could use the quietness and privacy."

"Of course," the priest furrowed his brows whilst nodding. "The Cathedral is open to anyone."

"Thank you," Jackie was breathless in her attempt to uphold herself to professionalism and etiquette. Seconds seemed to stretch on for infinity before she finally sat down on a bench to the right and ripped at the envelope. Shortness of breath has shivered into her jaw and made her feel faint all throughout unfolding the letter composed of several pages. Her composure dismantled upon reading the very first line.

Unprompted, her sight had been overtaken by tears, quick to fall from her eyelashes onto her cheeks and pool to her chin. It was instantly that her shoulders lifted in perpetual tremble and she arched her back forward, burdened with the unfair sorrow that comes when the suffering is confirmed to be almost over.

Jackie's weeping was a silent sacrament to behold.

At long last, she removed the hat from her head and placed it besides herself on the bench: she recognized, she would be spending a lot more time in that place than she initially appreciated she might.

The only problem with such spontaneous decisions regarding schedule was one that by all means, she had absolutely no expectations of herself to remember, not when her hands finally held onto the confirmation that she wasn't a fool to still love Thomas Shelby, despite everything that has happened, despite the distance and the silence. That problem was instead the burden of her brothers who expected their sister to be back at their hotel at a certain hour and were bound to assume the very worst when several hours have passed since the decided time and there was no word from her or of her.

At sundown, Gene Alloways walked across the Plaza de la Catedral, grabbing onto his pistol the closer he got to the Cathedral. His intentions were hellbent, especially after he has grown mad with impatience and worry having to listen to Lester's more reasonable and calculated approach to this situation. "I'll tell you what's reasonable," Gene had told him before storming off, "taking this pistol and shoving it into that priest's face until he tells me where fuck our sister is."

It was much to his surprise that as soon as he entered the Cathedral, he spotted Jackie simply sitting on one of the benches, alone.

With a sigh carrying clear curses along the lines of 'now is not the time to start abiding by our mother's religious traditions', Gene retreated his hand off the pistol, deciding instead to walk normally up to her bench row and quietly take a seat besides her. Before even taking a seat, he noticed the basket at her feet and the letter in her lap. The single smiled glance he received from Jackie after he had joined her confirmed all of Gene's suspicions; there was only one course of events involving letters that could have rendered Jackie to have such puffy eyes in public.

"You wrote to him again," he noted in a disappointed whisper, looking ahead.

"He wrote back," Jackie defended her breaking of the promise that she was done with writing to Thomas Shelby and jeopardising the secrecy of what they were building up towards.

"He...," Gene stumbled in his statement once he processed what Jackie had just told him. "He wrote back?" He turned his gaze back to his sister to find the presence of pearling tears back on the bottom line of her eyes.

Jackie nodded.

He waited a moment, assessing the sincerity of her features, only to realize he hasn't seen his sister smile so truly in so very long. "You're not joking," Gene brought his knee up on the bench, in the space between them and fully turned to his sister in order to reach out and grab the letter opened on her lap.

She met him with a quick slap acrosd the back of his hand. "It's private," she pouted.

Holding his hand, Gene leant back, "Well, does he still want to marry you?"

"Yes," Jackie looked down, hoping a little shade will conceal the blush of her cheeks.

"Then I should have the right, as your brother, to read that in order to assess whether or not he's worthy of you," Gene joked around, though accepting to face ahead once more and leave Jackie's love letter in her possession. After all, should Thomas Shelby have written her overly honeyed things, it would have turned his stomach upside down and that was improper for the holy setting of the Cathedral. "At the very least tell me what news he brings from England."

"I asked him to advice me on the Southampton or London matter," Jackie admitted.

"Oh, boy," Gene crossed his arms across his chest and leant back into his seat. He was no stranger to the absolute disaster debate that matter had turned into between the three of them. Gene a firm believer that should they anchor in Liverpool again, they could dodge the law enforcement with ease by already knowing the city well enough; Lester believed London was the best play for them and their business, while Jackie liked Southampton better, merely for the fact that she recalled clearly that she had one seller in London who might not be pleased to see their return after his goods have burnt in America instead of being sold. "Enlighten me with his solution."

"Southampton and London," she nodded proudly. Before Gene even had the time to express his confusion, she hurried to explain, "We leave the transport ship in Southampton and take a boat from there to London, where the Peaky Blinders will wait for us."

"The second you tell this plan to Lester, he will say you learnt nothing from our first arrest," Gene chuckled, shaking his head.

"He doesn't know Tommy like I do," she hurried to affirm her truth.

After allowing the silence to linger a while, sufficiently to even answer the call of his curiosity and steal a glance at the letter in her lap, eyeing specifically the burn mark on it, Gene sighed, "You really love this man, correct?"

"I do," Jackie admitted quietly. "Even I am aware of how downright insane it is to love a man I haven't seen in so long, a man I haven't even talk to, but who has remained, regardless, a permanent resident in both my soul and my mind. Merely the thought of him makes me feel comfort and excitement, like I was falling in love for the first time again. I know it sound childish, even stupid for the land work we are into these days, but it's true, Gene, I love him. There's simply nothing I can do about it. And I don't think I want to anymore."

Gene nodded along and eventually sat up. "Alright then," he stretched and offered his hand to his sister. "I say we go with his plan then."

Despite taking his hand and holding gratitude in her eyes, Jackie choose humor for her answer, "I don't remember you having that much of a say in how we run our business."

"Yes, yes," Gene rolled his eyes and picked up her basket. "You can thank me for my support later, when Lester loses his marbles hearing of this. Should we open up one of these bottles to swallow his anger better once it comes?"

"That might be the best plan you've ever come up with, brother," Jackie praised, fixing her hat back on and keeping the folded letter hugged to her chest.

So close now, she caught herself thinking. So close to seeing him again. 

AUTHOR'S NOTE :    And thus, we end the second act of this book on a hopeful note & the first new closing gif out of the eight I made today and will reveal throughout Act 3.

So far, I have planned as far as Act 4 ❤️

Act 3 will cover the events of Season 2, so what are your predictions regarding how the Alloways' will interact with the new characters introduced then? ( like Alfie for example )